Peelites

The Peelites were a liberal-conservative and pro-free trade faction of the Conservative Party which existed from 1846 to 1859, led by former Prime Minister Robert Peel. Upon Peel's fall from power in 1846, he retained control of the old party organization and its funds, and he was rivals with the Protectionist Conservatives of Benjamin Disraeli and Edward Smith-Stanley. Peel regained the center ground once held by Lord Liverpool and George Canning and later lost by the Duke of Wellington, arguing that the old order could not survive if it relied on the narrow foundations of the past. While Smith-Stanley sought to revive the Conservative Party of the 1830s, Peel refused to do so. In the 1847 election, the Peelites won 89 seats to the Protectionists' 243, and the future Liberal Party leader William Ewart Gladstone was elected MP for Oxford; before 1847, the four university seats had been a Tory monopoly. After 1852, the Protectionists abandoned protection, but not their belief in the economic privileges of the upper class. The Peelites decided to form a coalition with the Whigs, and the Peelites captured the premiership and half the offices. In 1859, they committed themselves decisively to the other side, forming the Liberal Party.